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Unless I miss my guess you're talking about some awfully small items. Best way to get up on what's available and doable in a practical sense would be to go to shapeways.com (because I know they have the following info in a really accessible manner) and read about their materials and design rules. It's stuff like "Here is material X, here are some high res photos, this is how bendy/rigid it is. Printing in this material needs to be at least THIS big or bigger and the smallest detail needs to be THAT big or larger." I don't think any home or hobby printers will make you the things you need if I understand your aims.
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Nov 20, 2012 17:16
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Pile of Kittens posted:Printrbot realities. I built the LC Printrbot+ about a month and a half ago and yeah, initially I thought the videos were pretty informative, and they started out that way but as they went on I don't know if he just got tired or what but there are a lot of skipped steps and assumptions that had me going back and forth and redoing stuff countless times. The printrbottalk forums have been incredibly helpful, I'd recommend it. If you give me a list of specific plastic parts that are crappy I could print you guys a few parts, I know the first thing I did once I got my printer somewhat dialed in was print new extrusion gears, I also replaced the extruder body with their lasercut version and it's reduced the headaches a bit.
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Nov 20, 2012 18:15
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Pile of Kittens posted:My boyfriend has had an early run Printrbot sitting in a box for a few months. He's started putting it together, and it's a perfect storm of poorly printed gears, missing parts, and baffling tutorials. I did improve things by telling him to flip his laptop upside down so that the build video wouldn't be mirrored to what he was trying to do. I need to email the guy that made these and tell him he cockblocked me with his lovely instructions... I had the same problems but eventually got it together. Not telling you the screw sizes t use where really messed me up. Sometimes its obvious, but there were also a lot of times where you could use one of several screws barely differing in length that would end up screwing you later and forcing you take things apart. The herringbone gears also drove me crazy. Why they shipped a resin gear paired with a plastic gear is beyond me. I barely got a replacement printed after calibration before the large resin geared chewed the plastic one to uselessness. Printrbot still sitting waiting for me to swap gears. Seconding printrbot talk forums. I couldn't have built it without them.
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Nov 20, 2012 20:10
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Yeaaah, he got one of the first round from when it got funded from Kickstarter, so the gears are poo poo. I'm just glad it wasn't an isolated case... nothing like watching someone go slowly and insane and thinking that maybe they're just missing something.
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Nov 21, 2012 06:35
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Hearing these horror stories is making me thing that my makergear M2 was money well spent. I have had minimal problem with the machine(needs frequent oiling or it squeeks), and while I still don't have this 'z calibration' thing quite down I have pretty successfully printed through my first 1kg and ordered 10 more! Is PLA still the preferred printing medium- a lot of the things I am cranking out look fine but one sizing will be off making things not mate nicely, or one thing will be too brittle/too hard (I'm looking at you screwless gear cubes, I swear my hands will never recover!)- so I'm wondering if what I need is to print those items in ABS. (Ordering 10KG let me get some pretty good bulk discounting from the supplier I found, if anyone in the Hamilton, Ontario area wants to buy some of my excess feel free to PM me or post here- I will sell at my cost of $35/Kg for PLA on spools- it rapidly becomes a non-worthwhile proposition if you need it mailed somewhere on top of that. ) Edit: if $35/KG after shipping and tax is a bad price to get PLA/ABS in Canada I would like to hear who other suppliers are who can do better for my next batch/ordering some ABS. Linux Assassin fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Nov 21, 2012 |
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Nov 21, 2012 23:05
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Linux Assassin posted:(Ordering 10KG let me get some pretty good bulk discounting from the supplier I found, if anyone in the Hamilton, Ontario area wants to buy some of my excess feel free to PM me or post here- I will sell at my cost of $35/Kg for PLA on spools- it rapidly becomes a non-worthwhile proposition if you need it mailed somewhere on top of that) Have you come out to any Toronto 3D Printers meetups? (This is Derek, if you have.) I'm sure there's someone on our google group who would take you up on some of that.
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Nov 21, 2012 23:10
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Apologies if this has been posted already - Formlabs and Kickstarter being sued http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20434031
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Nov 21, 2012 23:39
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That's pretty crazy, I hope it doesn't affect the industry as a whole.
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Nov 22, 2012 03:06
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Had to happen to somebody sometime.  Hopefully whatever happens is at lease decisive so the whole thing doesn't become a legal morass that chills all creativity because no one knows if what they make is going to get them slapped with a lawsuit or not.
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Nov 22, 2012 03:27
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Mister Sinewave posted:Had to happen to somebody sometime. Hopefully the courts understand that there is NO loving WAY Kickstarter could be reasonably expected to check every invention that gets put up there for potential patent infringement.
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Nov 22, 2012 05:04
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Cockmaster posted:Hopefully the courts understand that there is NO loving WAY Kickstarter could be reasonably expected to check every invention that gets put up there for potential patent infringement. Yeah, this is way lovely for Kickstarter in general, and if it becomes a pattern could literally kill Kickstarter at least for any technology product. It's like suing the bank and the office building landlord as well as the company you think stole your idea.
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Nov 22, 2012 05:08
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Cockmaster posted:Hopefully the courts understand that there is NO loving WAY Kickstarter could be reasonably expected to check every invention that gets put up there for potential patent infringement. I imagine that's understood by all parties, but from what I understand about US law, naming Kickstarter in the suit might expedite the discovery process in some way?
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Nov 22, 2012 05:08
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Mister Sinewave posted:Had to happen to somebody sometime. Unfortunately it probably will be, but in a negative way. I wonder if the B9creator is next?
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Nov 22, 2012 07:28
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Here's the complaint. Here's the patent. Here are claims 1 and 23 said to be violated: Patent 5,597,520 posted:1. An improved method of stereolithographically forming a three-dimensional object by forming cross-sectional layers of said object from a material capable of physical transformation upon exposure to synergistic stimulation comprising the steps of receiving data descriptive of said cross-sectional layers, forming said cross-sectional layers by selectively exposing said material to said synergistic stimulation according to said data descriptive of said cross-sectional layers to build up the three-dimensional object layer-by-layer, the improvement comprising the steps of:
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Nov 23, 2012 02:58
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That's a lot more specific than I was expecting. Tbh I thought it'd be something like "a method of creating a 3d shape by using light to harden a photreactive medium". Fingers crossed that Formlabs doesn't get squished like a bug.
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Nov 23, 2012 07:41
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The original patent that covers 3d printing with stereolithography expired already. The complaint points out interviews Formlabs gave saying they're able to make their 3d printer cheaply because a lot of patents have expired, and then the complaint says they're acting maliciously because they should have known there was still this active patent that they were going to violate since they had looked at all those other patents.
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Nov 23, 2012 08:17
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To me this really looks like a spoiler lawsuit, I suspect Formlabs won't really have the resources to fight this off in court and that's what 3D Systems is relying on to kill off a competitor before they get off the ground. Are Formlabs really using those techniques? They claim to have researched the patents so it would be really stupid of them.
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Nov 23, 2012 10:48
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Anta posted:To me this really looks like a spoiler lawsuit, I suspect Formlabs won't really have the resources to fight this off in court and that's what 3D Systems is relying on to kill off a competitor before they get off the ground. Yea- I'm inclined to believe that this is a spook suit. Formlabs has no money (else they would not be on kickstarter), but made a product that seems to legitimately threaten 3d systems products, and can use 'off the shelf' resins to boot (which 3d systems does not like because they like to sell you the razor at an inflated price and then sell the blades at even more inflated prices). On the other hand 3d systems did not sue the b9 creator guy, who has a similarly slick product but does not use a laser, achieves faster prints, and has similar quality. Perhaps its because they thought had the resources to defend himself, or perhaps its because they only feel that formlabs is infringing on there patent.
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Nov 23, 2012 21:13
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Ok, I want to do something neat with my 3d printer. (Not that I'm not enjoying printing gear cube after gear cube until I finally, today actually, got one to print that went together and worked with no additional finishing!) Christmas is coming up, I want to 3d print some gifts. Gear cubes are neat and all, but not very specialized. Some of my family vacations to some exotic locations quite regularly- you can get topographic maps of exotic location. Those topographic maps will be black and white bitmaps. A 3d printed topographic map of a location as a keyrack of wall plaque would be really cool as well as very personalized. My problem, how do I turn a black and white image to an STL file. The theroy makes sense to me, assign some distance value to the bitmap colour spectrum and the 0-255 spread of white->black will translate to height, while the X/Y co-ordinates of the pixils will translate to x/y. However it would likely take me months to code such a beast, and some people already seem to be doing similar stuff. Does anyone know a way I can do this?
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Nov 27, 2012 01:33
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Linux Assassin posted:Ok, I want to do something neat with my 3d printer. (Not that I'm not enjoying printing gear cube after gear cube until I finally, today actually, got one to print that went together and worked with no additional finishing!) When you say "black and white bitmaps" and "0-255 spread of white->black will translate to height" I assume you mean heightmaps instead of actual topographical maps? If so there are lots of tools, here's a random untested one I found searching for "heightmap to stl": http://sourceforge.net/projects/heightmap2stl/ I think apps like Blender and Meshlab might support importing bitmaps as well. If these are actual topographical maps with the curvy lines and stuff, welp... can't help ya there 
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Nov 27, 2012 02:04
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I don't know exactly what you're after but something really lame that might get you part way there is to take your image and make it a 2D background or texture or a flat square or something. Then draw out the contour by hand by basically tracing over the image. Then expand/raise/whatever the sections as needed. I used that method to make a gear-shaped hole to mate onto the gear on a motor. Drew it out, deleted the flat 2D square with the image on it, then scaled it to match a known dimension and done. If it sounds like the kind of hack process worked out by someone who's barely able to fuddle his way through the tools in sketchup, you're right! 
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Nov 27, 2012 03:26
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kafkasgoldfish posted:When you say "black and white bitmaps" and "0-255 spread of white->black will translate to height" I assume you mean heightmaps instead of actual topographical maps? If so there are lots of tools, here's a random untested one I found searching for "heightmap to stl": http://sourceforge.net/projects/heightmap2stl/ I think apps like Blender and Meshlab might support importing bitmaps as well. No this is it exactly- wow. it does EXACTLY what I want it to do. Fantastic.
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Nov 27, 2012 04:32
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My latest print: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:35359 (Took about 60 hours start to finish, whew.)
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Nov 27, 2012 23:32
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Hello! Now that I'm grown up and have a real job, I think it's time I give in to my long standing desire to have a 3D printer. The specific use case I have in mind (although I have a feeling once I have one I'll be printing left right and centre) is custom brackets - the kind of thing that joins together a pile of servos and electronics into one single thing. Making a robot chassis out of wood is always a horrendous process - being able to design something in CAD with all the correct mounting holes and hit print would be wonderful! I'm based in the UK, so if anyone else lives here hearing their experiences on shipping and local suppliers would be brilliant. I think £500 ($800) would be a reasonable expenditure. I can be flexible (having recently learnt that somebody I know puts that much up their nose every month, I'm feeling slightly more generous in budget), but something like a Replicator 2 would be too much. The printers I've identified so far as possibly suitable are: 1. RepRap Prusa Mendel. I like the ethos of RepRap, the community seems large, and if I wanted to I could extend it. It looks like a mostly-assembled kit comes in at £450-£500. I also like the fact it has a fairly large heritage behind it. If anyone has any recommended suppliers (UK/EU based preferred) I'd appreciate hearing about them. 2. Solidoodle. I've seen it mentioned a few times in this thread, although most recently for their poor shipping. 3. Printrbot. My principal concerns are: 1. Community - I've owned enough obscure devices to know that if you go with the flow you're much more likely to find the support you need. It's great saving $100 but if you're the only person with any technical knowledge who owns a device then when it breaks you're screwed. 2. Cheap filament - I think all 3 can use fairly generic ABS, but I may be wrong? 3. Not too involved. I'm perfectly capable of populating circuit boards, but I don't really want to. Assembling a kit is fine, but assembling from scratch seems too much like hard work. I'd love to hear of any experiences with the three (especially from people who've used more than one 3D printer). Currently I'm tending towards a Mendel Prusa, but if anyone thinks something else that I've not heard of (so much has happened in the 3D printing space in the last year!) would be worth investigating, please mention it. I know there's a lot of RepRap derivatives that might be worth investigating.
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Nov 28, 2012 20:14
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We have a Replicator 2 showing up at the space Friday!  Can't wait to start messing around with it.
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Nov 28, 2012 20:43
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leo_r posted:Hello! I bought me a Printrbot+ and it sort of fulfills all your criteria. It has a decent sized community and it prints in ABS and PLA (and Polycarbonate, but that's not quite beginner stuff). As for being not too involved...it comes in a kit that you assemble. Took me a couple of afternoons to put it all together, and another afternoon to get it printing. After that I've been upgrading it now and then to tease out better prints. It is not set-and-forget yet. You have to calibrate it often and I still get the occasional failed print because I forgot to do something or set something wrong. But it is fairly inexpensive, fairly easy to assemble and set up, has loads of upgrades available, some are more or less mandatory for good prints, others are more for if you want to print faster. If you get a Printrbot, my recommendation is to get a plate of hardened or borosilicate (pyrex) glass and 4 springs to set up an adjustable glass print bed. It will save you so much headache. Also print a cooling fan duct and add a cooling fan, it really ups the quality of your prints. If you want to go the RepRap route I would suggest looking into one of the Rostock (delta robot) variants, they're a fairly new development but they look like they'll have way less of the headaches found in the normal (cartesian) printers (Instead they'll probably have their very own set of headaches).
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Nov 29, 2012 10:58
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I'm very happy with my ORD Bot (which I believe is available in kit form outside the U.S. from some suppliers), but it is a DIY hobby thing. I was leisurely about putting mine together (at least on some days, others I worked all day at it), and it took a month or so to source the parts, put it together, and get things printing. Also it looks like a squirrel nest, as I didn't do the "clean" build, and my wiring doesn't fit inside the springs.
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Nov 29, 2012 15:26
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Anta posted:
Do you have a link to the files for the cooling fan duct you like for your printrbot+? My biggest issues with it so far are definitely being able to print small prints quickly without still cooling plastic distorting them and having to recalibrate the print bed after every print. I am going to try and get it going again this weekend now that I have attached a replacement herringbone gear to the extruder motor.
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Nov 29, 2012 15:28
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nesbit37 posted:Do you have a link to the files for the cooling fan duct you like for your printrbot+? My biggest issues with it so far are definitely being able to print small prints quickly without still cooling plastic distorting them and having to recalibrate the print bed after every print. I am going to try and get it going again this weekend now that I have attached a replacement herringbone gear to the extruder motor. This is the one I printed for mine: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:27754 If I were to put a fan on now I would go for this one that just clips on. It's a derivative of the one I'm using, and probably better: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:29565 Both of those are for the plus, but there are a lot of fan ducts and mounts on thingiverse for pretty much any printer.
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Nov 29, 2012 16:23
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Finally got to play with 3D printable wood filament this week! The owner of the filament brought in a few examples, including this partial Owl (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:18218) that failed while unattended because the coil didn't naturally unfurl as easily as plastic:   I'm gonna do a little writeup with video soon, but here's the set of my Space Invaders plugs that we printed: 
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Nov 29, 2012 20:01
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That poo poo's crazy! Thanks for the pics, it's nice to see some actual prints. e: Was the owl at 100% infill, or something else?
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Nov 29, 2012 20:24
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Looks like Staples is entering the fray.
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Nov 29, 2012 20:32
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Mister Sinewave posted:That poo poo's crazy! Thanks for the pics, it's nice to see some actual prints. Nah, I doubt he would've done more than 30% on it. It's hard to see, but I think it sputtered out partway through a pattern coincidentally right after a solid layer.
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Nov 29, 2012 21:46
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Does anyone happen to know how to disable the hot-end heat requirements in Pronterface without disabling the extruder motor? Basically I'm trying to run a simple GCode program that "extrudes" a stylus downwards, draws some lines, then retracts it, but Pronterface just sits there doing its temperature countdown thing forever, regardless of what I try. *edit* For clarification, I can manually do everything I want with the extruder by entering G-Code commands into the console in Pronterface (I've disabled the safe extrude setting in Marlin to allow this), but something about hitting "Print" sets it into a different routine. *edit2* Nevermind, my vector to g-code generator was using incorrect commenting code, and screwed it up in the file! Get stuck, ask question on internet > take break > find solution myself as soon as I come back. 
Locus fucked around with this message at 03:44 on Nov 30, 2012 |
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Nov 30, 2012 00:06
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Anyone in the UK after a cheap starter printer might want to check out the https://www.sumpod.com sumpod mdf basic for £280 shipped. Information is pretty thin but the kit looks like a solid little platform. They also do a massive aluminium version for £1600 (600x600x600 build platform). If it's a complete kit for that price I'll get one in January.
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Nov 30, 2012 20:00
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Echoing the towards printrbot. I bought mine at makerfair NYC, didnt come with a heated bed so it had to be mailed to me. I hate the videos so much for instruction assembly. It only took me about 3 or 4 days to build my printrbot LC, but that was around 12-14 hours a day building it. My hobbed bolt has a flat spot which didnt seem like it made to much of a difference with 3mm but with my 1.75mm it is awful inconsistent(probably should use a proper 1.75mm hobbed bolt anyways). The teeth end of the bolt is to far to the side and will not center up. Assembly is tedious as hell and killed my hand. I replaced all the linear bearing because it was jamming my z axis . Replaced all the belts and pulleys with gt2 before even installing them. Trying to get to the electronics after the whole thing is together is also awful. On the Plus side of things, I really like this extruder, the Ubis (except for it being loving 1/4" threads holy gently caress), the printrboard is also nice. And once I got it printing I forgot how much I hated all those other little things. I then also remember I only paid $600 for the whole thing. I found the printrbot WIKI and message board to be very helpful. edit, I also made several hotends(among other things) here are the 2 I like the most  I also like the look of thise Toronto meet up thing, being from Hamilton better not be an issue cakeslob fucked around with this message at 23:29 on Dec 1, 2012 |
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Dec 1, 2012 23:11
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:mmhmm:
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 Just an update on the extruder I mentioned earlier - beta testing has begun! Details here: http://www.soliforum.com/post/6154/#p6154
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Dec 3, 2012 06:31
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leo_r posted:Hello! The RepRapPro Mendel will do what you want. Its made by Adrian Bowyer (who started the whole reprap project), It uses Melzi Electronics, which come preassembled and are hard to gently caress up, and is a well designed printer from a well respected UK company. http://reprappro.com/Mendel
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Dec 3, 2012 17:43
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greenman100 posted:
This is really cool and looks awesome. I have that same gearmotor in my parts bin!
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Dec 3, 2012 18:11
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greenman100, I'm keen enough to pick up one of the 4 you're selling for our hackerspace if you're still selling. Tried to pm you but no dice
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Dec 4, 2012 10:11
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